Dustbowl on PBS

paul · Nov 18, 2012

Anyone else watching the show on PBS? 4 hours, 2 tonite, 2 on Monday.

Had to negociate with the wofe on TV time, but got to it 15 minutes late.

Kinda interesting.

Nothing ever repeats exactly, but interesting to see the bad ecconomic times of 1929, the farmers actually having a really really good year or 2, then the dry & bad ecconomy hit real hard.

Not all that far removed from current times, really, just the irrigation keeping the dust clouds down,t he crops growing.

--->Paul

DeltaRed · Nov 18, 2012

It's just now comming on.Sounds interesting

jm. · Nov 18, 2012

It is just unreal how hard things were. Even 10 years latter in 1947 I can remember going to Califorina and getting caught in a dust storm and sanded the front of the car clean. I was 7 years old but remember it well.

dstates · Nov 18, 2012

I was hoping to watch it tonight, but either I missed it (got home at 7:45) or it hasnt' come on yet. I'm hoping I didn't miss it.

Tony in Mass. · Nov 18, 2012

Here it's going to be repeated at 10PM, in Conn. at 11-30. The second half tommorrow night, every station and time zone could be different.I guess tomorrow will be about water problems nowdays, cripes the 30's is depressing enough.

Anonymous-0 · Nov 18, 2012

It sure makes one feel thankful for what each of us has. I can't imagine going through something like that.

Rich Iowa · Nov 18, 2012

I caught about half of the show tonight. That had to be a terrible event to have to live through. Just last week I saw a book titled Dust Bowl by Ken Burns, I think it was to accompany this show. May go back and buy the book.

Tony in Mass. · Nov 18, 2012

I drove thru a tiny one on Rt 25 in New Mexico a few years ago, that was weird enough, I can't imagine a 'haboob'. Which I suppose what you ran into back then.
I dunno about that show, Woodie Guthrie singing a cheerful little ditty after an hour and a half of dead babies? something wrong with that picture...

Greg K · Nov 18, 2012

Yep just got done watching it and WOW! I was also wondering about how it parallels these past years. The rain follows the plow lol kinda wonder how many other "wise" sayings were just sales pitches. Had to laugh when they were talking about farming in the 20"s and they show a styled JD on rubber though.

casenut1 · Nov 18, 2012

just watched it . very interesting.

Greg K · Nov 18, 2012

Also a lot of other neat footage of old equipment. Looked like an Aultman Taylor pulling a combine IIRC, and a lot of other pieces.

MarkB_MI · Nov 19, 2012

I read Timothy Egan's book a few years ago and I highly recommend it. I found the show a little hard to watch: those old-timers were crying when they thought back to what they had experienced as small children. I grew up on the periphery of the dust bowl region, but very few of the old-timers would talk about the dust bowl; I think it was just too painful for them to remember.

Fergienewbee · Nov 19, 2012

Missed the first half, but will watch the rest tonight. I read "The Worst Hard Times" after someone on YT recommended it. Hard to believe people lived like that--some not much more than a hole in the ground.

Larry

Billy Shafer · Nov 19, 2012

My mother is 85 and lived through the dust bowl in a tent. Told us of people dieing with sand in the lungs. Cars being sandblasted so much all the paint was gone. People going crazy. Hospitals being set up where people went to die because of the sand.Not being able to see the end of the tent at noon,without a lantern. I don't see how they made it.

730d se · Nov 19, 2012

If we had all of the marketing outlets of today back then, the only ones with money would have been the "end of times" evangelists and Al Gore!
So much for "Global Warming" and all of the other scare tactics designed to scare the sheep in to submission in order to control them.

Anonymous-0 · Nov 19, 2012

I watched it, very interesting. Some of the same people in the History channel's Black Blizzard.It could happen again the way everyone blackens everything with little residue left to protect the soil. Grandpa said he got a little crop in 33 but in 34 the pigeon grass didn't even grow!

FrankDDavis · Nov 19, 2012

My folks were raising 5 kids on a farm in the Texas panhandle during the "Dirty Thirties". Number 6 (me) didn't come along until 1942. Mom didn't talk about it much either. God, it had to be tough times. My Dad left us shortly after I was born and Mom finished the job. She could make do with nothing and stretch everything. She was also tough as a boot but loved all of us. I sure did what I was told.

Frank

Nancy Howell · Nov 19, 2012

Yup, I watched it. Ken Burns always does good stuff. Will watch the rest tonight.

Nancy Howell · Nov 19, 2012

If I remember correctly, it was two or three years into the dust bowl when "sand pneumonia" started showing up.

It was so bad, the Red Cross set up shelters every where they could. They declared a "medical emergency". If things weren't bad enough, now the sand was taking the people, especially the children.

The amount of earth that was moved in one of those storms, was mind boggling.

rrlund · Nov 19, 2012

I watched the last half,after Hee Haw. I'd seen a lot of that on other shows over the years,unless that's a rerun. I just know I'd seen a fair whack of that stuff somewhere before.

Must have been that darned global warming back then.

Walt Davies · Nov 19, 2012

Funny how they always blame everything on Man. Just how does tilling soil create a ten year drought. They talk about sand blowing couldn't be very good top soil if it was all sand. I think it's about time we blamed mother nature for the things that she causes. Now we may have helped some with the plowing but remember we did that before the drought.
Walt
PS Still a good show thought.

SweetFeet · Nov 19, 2012

Paul,

Here is a link to episode 1 if anyone missed it and would like to watch it. If my link does not work, just go to pbs. org... and you can find it. (I'm going to watch it right now).

Thanks for the heads-up on the program. I don't pay much attention to TV.
The Dust Bowl link to episode 1

SweetFeet · Nov 19, 2012

If you like stuff about the dust bowl and the depression - there is a good book called, "The Dirty Thirties" by Wiliam H. Hull M.A.

It is only about 250 pages and is a compilation of short stories/memories of folks who experienced it. A very good read.

Mike M · Nov 19, 2012

Watch the show.

They talked about the praire grasses that were deep rooted and held the moisture and the soil into place and covered all the grounds.

Once you go and plow all that under and then hit a drought there is nothing growing there to hold the soil.

MarkB_MI · Nov 19, 2012

730, did you watch the program? If there's one message to get from the show, it's that the things we do for short-term profit can have lasting, cataclysmic effects on our environment.

Back in the 1890s, the railroad companies paid hucksters to make outlandish claims, such as "rain follows the plow". Today, big energy companies fund so-called skeptics who make ridiculous claims in the face of solid scientific evidence. You don't think you're a sheep? Then stop believing everything will be fine if we pretend there's no problem.

MarkB_MI · Nov 19, 2012

Walt, droughts are natural events, but poor farming practices are not. I think you'll have a hard time finding a dryland farmer in the High Plains who will agree with your idea that the Dust Bowl wasn't man-made. And I'm even more certain you won't find one who uses the same practices today as the farmers of the twenties.

Billy Shafer · Nov 19, 2012

According to my mother. The sand problem started within a year. But since most were poor and could not afford a doctor.No one knew about the problem until much later. She does remember the Red Cross coming along in trucks. Picking up the sick ones. Everyone knew they were not coming back.

Started calling them the death trucks. Hardest hit were the babies,kids and the older folks. Told us about her father finding an abandon house. Tried to seal it off with sheets dipped in flour and water.Didn't help.Sand was everywhere.Said she knew several people that just wandered off never saw them again.

Bodyman · Nov 19, 2012

Walt, sounds like you may be of the same mindset as some of the folks of that era. I live in a part of the country that HAD some of the best farmland in the country. BUT, we may also be facing a man made disaster here. greed takes over, tear out every fence row, cut down all the trees, get rid of all the building sites with the exception Hog and chicken facilities. All in the name of just a few more tillable acres. Now the wind blows nearly every day, and that wind carries chicken feathers, the smell of chicken _ _ _ _ and confinment hog stench which also runs off some of the fields and down the ditches into the streams after improper application. Just last year within a mile of my home there were 6 EAGLES,5 Wild turkeys and 7 turkey vultures, not one returned this year, Coincidence ???? Who will accept the blame when the final tally comes in ? IH, JD, the chemical companies whose lobbyists pump the BILLIONS of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ into the right hands? I am saddened when I think my new baby grandson will never have the oportunity to enjoy and love this land that was one of the greatest things from my chldhood some 60 + years ago.

Dustbowl on PBS

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